9. France

Continental Industrialization in the Nineteenth Century

• Simple catch-up after Napoleonic wars. Adopt British technology.

• Institutional changes

Institutional Changes.

• French revolution and Napoleonic conquest of most of Europe.

• End of internal tariffs; serfdom.

• Legal system: Code Napoleon.

• Improved educational system: primary and secondary schools, universities, scientific societies.

• Patent laws.

Contrast with Britain.

• Develop large internal market by eliminating internal tariffs and improving transport networks.

• Use import tariffs to protect infant industries from British competition. Friedrich List

• Develop large banks to fund industry.

• Introduce universal primary education.

• Prussia: universal primary education from late eighteenth century.

• Dominant in Zollverien (Customs union of German states) after 1818.

• Large railway network across Germany by 1850s.

• Large industrial banks established by 1870s.

Share of World Manufacturing.

Falling share of rest of world: de-industrialization.

France in the Nineteenth Century.

• Traditional view of Nineteenth century France as economic failure.

• Large, low productivity peasant agriculture with excessive attachment to land ownership.

• Small, conservative, family firms reluctant to innovate.

• Change in 1960s. Levy-Leboyer

• O’Brien and Keyder Economic growth in Britain and France, 1780-1914: two paths to the twentieth century (1978).

O’Brien and Keyder

• French industry had higher levels of capital per worker and productivity than did England in the nineteenth century.

• Overall levels of consumption within 15 per cent of English levels.

• Weakness of French economy was agriculture. Large peasant sector failed to release labour into industrial sector and had wrong pattern of demand for industrialization.

• Differences with England go back to Black Death.

• French population recovered faster: more grain, fewer animals.

• French peasants acquired rights to land, unlike England where they became wage labourers

Crafts (1983)

• Serious problems with O’Brien numbers. Underestimates labour force in industry, and ignores service sector which was much smaller in France than in England.

• Look at economies when they reached income of Britain in 1840: France and Germany in 1870

Per capita GDP (1990 dollars)

• French output grew around same rate as British: around 1 per cent per year.

• Respectable but no convergence

Agriculture

• Heywood: “Did peasantry impede French industrialization?”

• 80 per cent of farms small, but accounted for only 20 per cent of land area.

• Small farmers relied on wage labour on larger farms or proto-industrial activities.

• High quality goods produced in towns, lower quality in rural areas.

• Failure of agriculture to release labour? No demand from industry. Small difference between urban and rural wages.

• Slow expansion of agricultural output reflected slow demand from limited population increase.

• However, little mechanization of agriculture and high tariffs, causing high food prices

• Optimistic view of nineteenth century France.

• Agriculture performed adequately.

• Industrialization followed a different path than Britain or Germany reflecting constraints on French economy—two severe military defeats and a shortage of coal—rather than deficiencies of entrepeneurship.

• Vigorous steel industry lost to Germany in 1871

• Quality of life may have been increased through absence of industrial cities.

• Coal: In 1900 French coal output per capita was one third of Germany’s and one seventh of the UK’s.

• Extremely low use of steam power until 1890s

• Heavy reliance on water power. French invention and development of water turbine in 19th C.

• In 1899, 56 per cent of newly installed prime movers, by power, were water powered.

• Implied small factory size and geographical dispersion.

• Specialization in labour intensive, high skill production. Silk and worsted rather than cotton

Pessimistic View.

• French economy performed well until 1870s.

• Share of world exports fell from 13 per cent in 1860 to 7 per cent in 1913.

• Stagnation of traditional industries.

• 1892: raising of tariffs to high level and accelerated growth in cotton, metallurgy, power use.

• New industries—electricity and chemicals—relied on foreign technology although cars and aircraft were impressive, and industry performed well during WW1.

• Ultimately, modest growth rate was only possible with severe population limitation.

• Between 1850 and 1913 population of England and Wales doubled from 17.8 m to 36.3m.

• Population of France rose 10 per cent from 35.6 to 39.7 m

• Low population growth a response to poor economic prospects and caused France to turn from continental super-power to become second to Germany.